Kill Code by Joseph Collins Page A

rifle.
    Settling down behind the rifle, he carefully peered
through the scope. She could see him relax, slowly caress the
trigger and then the rifle went off. It slammed into Leo's
shoulder. Working the handle, he extracted the spent brass.
    “Right on the numbers, but a bit high. Probably the
elevation difference from where I usually shoot.” Leo wasn't
speaking to anyone in particular, just muttering to himself.
    He went out and checked the piece of equipment he
had put on the tripod. “A little on the warm side.”
    “What's that thing?” she asked.
    “A chronograph. Measures the speed of the bullet.
The round I loaded is moving a bit faster than it should. I'll tone
down the powder just a hair and see what that does.”
    He made some quick calculations and then went back
to the other bench and made up another bullet.
    Leo went through the same process again with
shooting and noted down some more numbers. She looked over his
shoulder and saw the scribbles on the paper. “Why don't you get a
computer to handle all that?”
    He wagged the calculator at her and said, “A
computer can break, be lost, have dead batteries. This calculator
runs on solar power and all I need is that, a piece of paper and a
pencil to figure out everything else. If needed, I can do it
without the calculator, but it gets to be a pain when you have a
lot of shooting to do.”
    “What exactly are we doing and why do you need my
help?”
    “I'm a precision rifle shooter. I need to get this
rifle dialed in so I can defend against whoever is coming after you
and probably me.”
    “Who is coming after me? And why?”
    “I don't know. That's something we'll have to figure
out.”
    He grabbed a couple of targets and a stapler, handed
them to her and said, “Take the truck out and put out those
targets, one at six hundred yards and another at a thousand.”
    “Why?”
    He gave her a long look and said, “That's your
favorite question, isn't it? Just because I might have a general
idea as to what this rifle will do at a hundred yards, I still need
to make sure that my calculations are right. It won't take
long.”
    She did as he asked, noting that the targets were
out there quite a distance away.
    In the back of her head, she wondered if Leo was
sighting in on her as she stapled the targets onto the wooden
target stand. Dismissing it as illogical; for one thing, he would
have to get rid of her body besides fetching his truck. But there
was someone out there after her.
    Leo had been busy in the meantime making up
bullets.
    The next several hours were about as boring as could
be. Leo would shoot a bullet, peer through what he called a
“spotting scope” at the target, fiddle with the scope, shoot
another bullet. Then, every five bullets, he would clean his
rifle—laboriously scrubbing the barrel with a long metal rod that
had what looked like a little piece of rag. The cleaning solvent
was acidic smelling.
    Jackie wondered why she was here and what she could
do to speed up the process. Finally, she asked, “What can I
do?”
    Leo looked up from his calculations, appearing
startled.
    “Nothing, right now. It shouldn't be much
longer.”
    “So, what am I supposed to do for now?”
    “Sit down, think of who might want you dead.”
    She didn't know how to do this, so she went back to
the truck and fired up her laptop. Naturally, she couldn't find any
WiFi access points. She had modified the WiFi card to reveal even
hidden networks. From there, it wouldn't be much of a problem to
gain access to it even if it was encrypted.
    Seeing how out in the sticks they probably still
used dial-up for Internet access, she dug around in her bag until
she found her air-card.
    Hopefully there was cellular access out here, and
she was surprised when she was able to get a strong signal and on
to the Internet. The first thing she did was log into the company
intranet. It took some time, because she had made sure it wasn't
something easy to access. She was an